Dutch Courage
by Rapunzel4
Summary: When Duo finds Heero trying to get extremely drunk, he wants to know why. But when Heero finally tells him, the answer isn't quite what he expects...


Disclaimers: I make no claims to owning Gundam Wing or its characters. Warnings: Shounen ai, some swearing (not much) Author's Ramblings: I have no idea what possessed me to write this, but I thought I'd give it a try.  
  
Dutch Courage  
By Rapunzel  
  
"Heero, what on earth are you doing?"  
  
Duo didn't really know why he bothered to ask the question; it was painfully obvious what Heero was doing. He was sitting in one of the recreational areas on Peacemillion, trying to get as drunk as humanly possible. The area around him was littered with empty bottles and cups, the latter having mostly been abandoned as Heero decided that drinking straight from the bottle was more efficient.  
  
Duo was perplexed. In all the time he'd known Heero, he'd never seen him touch a drop of alcohol, let alone get intoxicated. It was just the sort of thing Wing's pilot would never do. Once, Duo had asked him about it, and had been rather scornfully told that such behavior might interfere with one's ability to carry out the mission. So finding his friend sitting there trying to consume a large quantity of alcohol in a short space of time was surprising, to say the least. Perhaps, in answering the original question, Heero might also tell him why he was doing it.  
  
Duo looked at him expectantly.  
  
"I'm drinking," Heero muttered, sounding rather surly.  
  
Then again, this was Heero.  
  
"I can see that," Duo answered. He frowned at his friend, who was still sitting there, pointedly ignoring him. "I wouldn't have pegged you for the type. Aren't you the one who's always going on at us about not doing things that might impair our ability to pilot? Aren't you always reminding us that we have to be ready to fight at a moment's notice?"  
  
Heero fixed him with a dark look, and Duo found himself wanting to take back most of what he'd just said. Even drunk, Heero Yuy could still summon up an impressive death glare.  
  
"I am not jeopardizing the mission in any way," Heero told him, sounding rather indignant at the mere idea. "Wing is currently out of commission due to the need for repairs. Therefore, even if an attack were to occur, I would not be able to participate in the battle."  
  
Heero, having justified his reasoning to himself, took another long pull from one of the bottles he had with him. Duo was surprised that, despite the amount of the stuff Heero had obviously consumed already, his speech was not at all impaired. He squinted, trying to read the label on the bottle to figure out exactly how much alcohol that particular beverage had in it. Where the hell had Heero gotten the stuff anyway?  
  
Heero continued to ignore him, lifting the bottle again, and Duo finally decided to take action. Striding forward, he simultaneously smacked Heero's hand and grabbed the bottle from him. Being intoxicated made Heero's reflexes slower, and Duo had stepped back, still in possession of the bottle, before he thought to react.  
  
"Hey!" If looks could kill, Duo would have been a goner. Of course, if looks could kill, Heero would have done Duo in quite some time ago.  
  
"I think you've had more than enough," Duo said, carefully holding the bottle out of reach of his irritated comrade.  
  
"Who asked you?" Heero growled, then looked sorry he'd said it and dropped his eyes to the floor. "Give that back," he muttered, not looking up. "I need it."  
  
"What for?" Duo asked.  
  
It took Heero a minute to reply. "Dutch courage," he finally said, looking up at Duo through his bangs.  
  
"What?" Duo asked, confused. He'd never heard that particular phrase before.  
  
"Dutch courage," Heero repeated insistently. "Now give it back."  
  
"What's that?"  
  
Heero's eyes glazed slightly as he said, "Dutch courage: Courage obtained from drinking liquor."  
  
Duo frowned. "What do you need with that?"  
  
Heero lowered his eyes again and mumbled something.  
  
"What?" Duo asked. "I didn't catch that."  
  
This time Heero spoke clearly. "I said I wanted to tell you something."  
  
"So let me get this straight," Duo said, not quite able to believe what he was hearing. "You decided to go and get yourself absolutely potted just so that you could get up the nerve to say something to me?"  
  
"That's right," Heero said. He seemed to forget his former embarrassment and looked Duo straight in the eye.  
  
"Well?" Duo asked.  
  
"Well what?" Heero growled, looking irritated.  
  
"What were you going to say to me?"  
  
Heero glared. "It's not working yet. That's why you should give me back my drink."  
  
Duo sighed heavily. "You don't see the flaw in this plan?"  
  
"No," Heero answered, still glowering at him. "What flaw?"  
  
"Buddy, at the rate you're going, you're not going to give yourself Dutch courage, you're going to give yourself alcohol poisoning."  
  
"No, I won't," Heero said. "I have a high tolerance."  
  
"To alcohol?" Duo asked disbelievingly.  
  
Heero shrugged. "I have a high tolerance to everything else. Why should alcohol be any different?"  
  
"But have you ever tested that theory?" Duo asked.  
  
"That's what I'm doing now, isn't it?"  
  
"I thought you were trying to get your 'Dutch courage'," Duo said.  
  
Heero opened his mouth to retort, then closed it again, brows scrunching together. "You're confusing me," he complained.  
  
"Yup, you've definitely had more than enough," Duo muttered. Setting the bottle down behind him so that Heero would have to get by him to reach it, he turned to deal with his intoxicated comrade. "I think it's high time we got you back to your room."  
  
"Why?" Heero asked.  
  
"Do you really want the others to see you like this?" Duo asked.  
  
Heero had to think about that one for a minute. "No," he finally conceded.  
  
"Well, all right then," Duo said. He took Heero by the arm and pulled him to his feet, let go of him, and then promptly grabbed him again as Heero stumbled and almost fell. "Steady there!" he said, supporting quite a bit of Heero's weight as the other swayed dangerously.  
  
"Maybe you were right about that tolerance thing," Heero mumbled, clutching at the sleeve of Duo's shirt.  
  
/No shit?/ Duo thought, but didn't say aloud. Instead, he threw one of Heero's arms over his shoulder and concentrated on trying to haul his fellow pilot back to his room.  
  
~*~*~  
  
An hour later, Duo had decided that he was definitely right about the tolerance thing. He was confident that Heero would agree with him on the subject too, once the other pilot managed to stop puking his guts out. Currently, however, Heero was in no state to agree with anyone.  
  
Duo sighed, rubbing Heero's back as he bent over the toilet. "What in the world possessed you to do something this stupid?" he asked.  
  
He didn't expect an answer, and none was provided.  
  
Finally, Heero seemed to be finished. He leaned back and wiped his mouth. Somehow he managed to look very tired and disheveled and very beautiful at the same time.  
  
/Bad Duo!/ Duo scolded himself. Now was definitely not the time to think along those lines. Really, to the eye uninfluenced by emotion, Heero just looked like shit, and he probably wasn't feeling much better at the moment.  
  
"Here," Duo said, filling a cup with water and handing it to the ill pilot. "Drink that."  
  
Heero took the cup without protest, but swallowed only a few sips.  
  
"All of it," Duo insisted.  
  
"I'm not thirsty," Heero protested.  
  
"That's not the point," Duo replied. "Trust me, you'll thank me for this tomorrow. A lot of the symptoms of a hangover can be attributed to dehydration. Now shut up and drink."  
  
Heero gave him a dark look, but dutifully drank as he had been commanded. However, he might as well have ignored Duo for all the good it did. A moment later he was bent back over the toilet, heaving it all up again.  
  
"Well, that was counterproductive," Duo muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.  
  
When Heero finished for the second time, he looked absolutely miserable. "I hate the world," he groaned.  
  
"I hate to remind you buddy, but this whole thing was your idea in the first place," Duo reminded him.  
  
Heero gave him a rather baleful look, but there was no real energy behind it.  
  
"Normally I'd give you credit for being smarter than this," Duo continued. "So I really want to know exactly what it is you wanted to tell me that required you to drink this much."  
  
Heero dropped his gaze, letting it rest on the bathroom floor instead of his partner's face. He opened his mouth briefly, then seemed to think better of it and shut it again.  
  
"Well?" Duo prompted after a moment or two of this behavior.  
  
Abruptly, Heero pitched forward. Letting out a small sound of alarm, Duo grabbed at him, catching him before he could hit the floor. For a moment, he shook him ineffectually, before realizing what had happened.  
  
Heero had passed out.  
  
At first Duo was alarmed. Quickly, he ran over a mental checklist of the symptoms of alcohol poisoning, but Heero's breathing seemed to be normal, and his color was okay. "You prick!" Duo muttered irritably. "You'll never make me believe that wasn't deliberate." How like Heero to go and pull something like this just when he thought he might actually get some answers out of him.  
  
Resigning himself to his fate, Duo hauled himself up and attempted to pick Heero up. This was not as easy as it sounded, since he and Heero were almost exactly the same size, but eventually he managed it. He was exceedingly grateful that Heero kept his room as neat as he did, since he didn't trust himself to successfully navigate a messy room with his burden. Finally, however, he managed to get Heero tucked into bed, lying on his side. For a moment, he debated just leaving his comrade to sleep it off by himself, but then dismissed the idea. It would be wiser to not leave Heero on his own, just in case. And then there was also the little question of why this had happened in the first place.  
  
Answers were worth waiting for, and he intended to stay until he got them.  
  
~*~*~  
  
The first clue Duo had that Heero was waking up was the somewhat stifled groan that emerged from under the covers. Duo shook himself out of the half doze he had fallen into and sat up in his chair. Looking down at the bed, he saw that Heero had pulled the covers up and was attempting to hide his head under the pillow.  
  
"I told you that water would have been a good idea," Duo said.  
  
One blue eye peered out at him from under the pillow. It was hard to tell, but Duo was pretty sure that Heero was glaring at him.  
  
"Don't get irritated with me," Duo protested. "Like I told you last night, this is all your own doing."  
  
"Shut up!" Heero's voice was muffled by the pillow over his face, but the irritation in it could still be heard.  
  
Duo ignored him. "I mean, I really can't believe you would do something that dumb. You never drink before, and then you go and do that. You're lucky you didn't kill yourself really. But then I guess that's typical of you; you never do things by halves."  
  
Heero pulled the pillow away and sat up to glare at Duo. "Will you shut up?"  
  
"No," Duo answered simply. "Not until you tell me why you thought you had to get yourself that intoxicated."  
  
"I told you already," Heero growled, making a valiant effort to ignore his pounding headache.  
  
"You said you needed to tell me something, and you had to get drunk to do it, but then you never actually told me what it was you wanted to say," Duo reminded him.  
  
"..." Heero didn't seem to have a response for that.  
  
"Look," Duo said, running a hand through his bangs, "the whole 'Dutch courage' thing didn't work so well, so why don't you just try telling me whatever it was you wanted to say?"  
  
"I can't," Heero said quietly.  
  
"Why not?"  
  
Heero shut his mouth and simply shook his head.  
  
Duo sighed heavily. "Look, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I just figured that after the way you acted last night, it had to be important."  
  
"It is," Heero said quickly. "At least," he amended, "it's important to me."  
  
"Well, then why can't you tell me?"  
  
"You won't like it," Heero warned.  
  
"Let me be the judge of that," Duo replied.  
  
Heero was silent for a moment, staring at the bedspread, obviously contemplating something. Figuring that further pushing would simply interrupt whatever thought process Heero was going through, Duo held his tongue and waited. He was just beginning to wonder whether Heero would ever make up his mind when the other spoke again.  
  
"Will you promise me something?" Heero asked hesitantly.  
  
"Ask," Duo replied without hesitation.  
  
"If I tell you, will you promise not to hate me?"  
  
Duo blinked, surprised. That was the oddest request he had ever heard Heero make. Still, it wasn't as if it would be difficult for him to fulfill it. "I swear I won't hate you," he said firmly.  
  
"It's just that I... I..." Heero took a deep breath and seemed to gather his courage in both hands. "DuoIloveyou!"  
  
Duo stared at him. No way. Heero hadn't just said what he thought he'd said. Why would Heero think that he... There was just no way. "That's all?" he asked, slightly disbelieving.  
  
Duo's brain had effectively ceased all rational thought upon processing the declaration, but one look at Heero's face was enough to tell him that his response was definitely _not_ the right one.  
  
"I mean," he babbled, desperately trying to salvage the situation, "I can't believe you did all that just to tell me that, not that I'm not glad you told me, because I am, but I can't believe you thought I would get mad at you, I mean, that would be kind of hypocritical of me, seeing as how I feel the same way, but I guess I can kind of see why you wouldn't want to tell me, and I didn't get very much sleep last night, so please forgive me if I say something really stupid because my brain's not working right now."  
  
It was Heero's turn to sit and stare as he tried to make sense of the run- on sentence. After running it through his mind again to pick out the pertinent bits, he hit on one in particular. "You love me?"  
  
Duo ducked his head, trying to hide the blush he was sure was moving up his face. "Um... yes."  
  
"Why didn't you tell me?"  
  
"Because," Duo said, "when it comes right down to it, I'm just as much of a coward as you are. Maybe even more so. Except that I didn't try using alcohol to fix that."  
  
"I almost wish I hadn't," Heero admitted, wincing as the pounding in his head continued unabated.  
  
Duo observed the wince and reached out to run a gentle hand over Heero's forehead. "You must have the headache from hell right now. I'll go get you some painkillers, okay?"  
  
"Okay," Heero agreed gratefully.  
  
Duo got up and walked towards the door, but paused and turned to look back at him. "Hey, Heero?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Will you promise me something now?"  
  
Heero nodded, curious as to what Duo was going to ask.  
  
"Next time you have something to say to me, just say it. No more of this 'Dutch courage' crap, okay?"  
  
"I promise," Heero answered, smiling.  
  
Owari  
  
Author's notes: Why is it I always end up writing get together fics? Especially since I suck at writing the actual get together part... 


End file.
